UCI LIFTED graduates celebrate completion of their bachelor's degrees
  • June 14, 2026

  • The school's LIFTED program is part of a broad expansion of education behind bars. For at least one inmate graduate, the result is a new self-image, the OC Register reports

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“On Wednesday, June 17, a class of 25 men will line up to collect the diplomas they’ve earned, in sociology, from UC Irvine.

Then, after they’ve hugged family and finished some brief celebrations, guards will lead the men back to the cots where they sleep in dorm-style cells at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. And after that?

For the Class of ’26 at UCI’s Donovan Correctional campus, the future is an odd mix of open-ended questions (What can an inmate do with a four-year college degree? What is the purpose of education?) and rock-hard certainty. Most of these soon-to-be grads have been convicted of violent crimes. Many will be in prison for years or decades to come. Some expect to die there.

Still, for every one of those students, their new degree will carry profound meaning. People who’ve done it say the accomplishment of completing a nothing-held-back college curriculum — without the standard student perks like unfettered access to the internet, or AI, or a keg — is an opportunity to change what they see in the mirror.

Self-improvement might be simple, as motivations go, but it’s also powerful.”

For the full story, please visit the OC Register.

 

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